Collins Column: O'Brien's lust to return to NFL part of deal Penn State fans must accept

gene j. puskar / associated press
Penn State coach Bill O'Brien said that despite the Nittany Lions' 4-2 record, there are many good teams left on the team's schedule.

STATE COLLEGE

Penn State fans need to grip reality. They need to hug it with vigor. They don't need to like it, because who likes reality all the time? But if they want to move on boldy and purposefully into the future, there are a few facts they need to accept.

One is that Joe Paterno is no longer their football coach.

Another is that State College isn't necessarily a haven for coaches to begin their careers, see them through to Hall of Fame stature, and ease off into a retirement somewhere in Boalsburg.

That takes us to the press conference Bill O'Brien held Monday to talk about last week's samba with the Philadelphia Eagles and Cleveland Browns. That takes us to a few admissions he made that are accepted as common sense facts at other schools. And that also takes us to a level of frustration and worry no other fan base would dare approach.

"Coaching is my profession. Coaching is something that I love. I love coaching these kids here at Penn State," O'Brien said. "Respect my profession. In my profession, the National Football League is the highest level of coaching."

In short, he has a great job. He had a chance to do something he might like even better, something that might nearly double his salary. He looked into it. So, deal with it.

Thing is, Penn State fans don't know how to just deal with it. Because quite frankly, they've never had to.

Think about this: Paterno had a serious flirtation with the National Football League just one time, and that came in 1973 when the then-Boston Patriots seemed to have agreed with him on a multi-million dollar contract that would have made him their head coach and general manager. For the next 38 years, he didn't entertain NFL offers. He never developed an iota of desire to test his coaching ability at that level.

He just built winning football teams. He just graduated players. He just provided stability for Penn State in a profession where it hasn't been a guarantee for decades most anywhere else. He just did all of it for compensation that rivaled what a coach at some lower-level mid-majors make.

Do Penn State fans really understand how rare that is? How can they, when it's all they've ever known? But for all the passion with which he spoke Monday, O'Brien never sounded like a guy who would do things that way. When asked directly if he thought this whole circus with the NFL and the boosters and the nervous fans and the jumpy media might repeat itself next year, O'Brien said only that he remained committed to the 2013 team.

His admission that he "doesn't have a crystal ball" barely took a spray bottle to the conflagration that is his obvious passion for the NFL.

"I love that league," O'Brien said.

It should occur to Nittany Lions fans at this point that it's not the NFL's money that ultimately could lure him away.

It's the NFL's challenge.

It's a career opportunity he might get only once, and for all his bluster about not staying at Penn State for the money, he acknowledged NFL money could set himself, his wife and his two sons on a path of comfort for the rest of their lives.

"I won't be coaching for 47 more years. I won't. I will not be coaching when I'm 80 years old," O'Brien said. "I think I can coach about 20 to 25 more years, because basically that's where I can see my career going. It's my job as the husband and the father in (my) house to take care of my family first. That's my duty as a father and a husband, and that's what I did."

Without question, O'Brien finds himself in a wonderful place. He's got a long-term contract with Penn State, where alumni and fans consider him nothing short of a savior for the program that really could have crumbled. He has job security that all but a handful of coaches in the nation can boast. And in those two ways, he is no different than his legendary predecessor.

What separates O'Brien from Paterno is that O'Brien has the combination of ambition and the opportunity to fulfill it. Doing so doesn't make him a bad guy or an ungrateful mercenary.

It makes him just like Chip Kelly or Nick Saban or Steve Spurrier or Greg Schiano or any number of successful college coaches who have had chances to coach at the highest level of professional football and at least explored the possibility.

The least-negative effect of the Sandusky scandal is that it dragged the Penn State football program kicking and screaming into the 21st century, where football coaches are paid like CEOs and work hard in part so to put themselves in demand.

No, Bill O'Brien might not be the head coach at Penn State beyond next year. That seems to at least be a possibility. But if you want a terrific football program, you need a terrific coach. And if you have a terrific coach, that's all part of the deal.

DONNIE COLLINS covers Penn State football for The Times-Tribune. Contact him at dcollins@timesshamrock.com, read his blog at http://blogs.thetimes-tribune.com/pennstate/, or follow him on Twitter @psubst

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